The dilemma of prostate cancer--a growing human and economic burden irrespective of treatment strategies.

All prostate cancer patients (719 patients) within a specified population were studied in order to assess both the overall economic burden of this disease to the health-care economy and its burden to the individual patient. The economic burden was estimated as the total lifetime expense (1995 prices) of all palliative hospital treatment. The expenses associated with prostate cancer therapy averaged US$ 19755 per person. By extrapolation, palliative therapy for this disease currently consumes almost 1% of the entire Danish health-care budget. A total of 62% of the patients died from the disease. During hospitalization these patients on average required three times as much hospital care as other patients and about one-third needed regular treatment with opiates or equivalent drugs. Under the present circumstances we cannot recommend an aggressive strategy towards localized prostate cancer even though the incidence of this disease is increasing at an alarming speed and its economic and human costs are excessive.